And while BSI's final pay out for the year has made history in the sugar industry records, do they anticipate this trend to continue within the following season? Despite producing 164,000 metric tons less than the last season?
Chavarria say's that this year's drop in production is as a result of certain fields that are in need of replanting. He says that if we expect to keep these current prices, the farmers will need to improve their cane yields.
Shawn Chavarria, Director of Finance
"What we've seen in the past two years in fact since the record drought in 2019 which impacted the 2020 crop we have seen that cane supply has been coming down. We believe it's due to a combination of factors mainly related to the fact that fields need to be replanted a lot of them are in a state where their age, because of the amount of harvest that they have gone through their productivity is coming down, but we know that the cost of financing is an issue in the industry it's high and so as an industry we need to come together to see how we can collectively working together to address that. But low
replanting rates we believe is one of the cause of the dwindling production. From time to time we also battle pests, last years we know that the frog hopper pest was an issue and that impacted the cane supply to a lesser extent we also have another pest called the stem boar not as prevalent as frog hopper but it is a pest that we do have to monitor. But the main contributing factor to the decline in production has been the lower yields and that's something as an industry we do need to work together to address cause if cane supply continues to come down then we are not taking advantage of the prices that we are seeing at the moment and similarly the cost for production will increase and so if we can get higher yields that will lower production costs and so farmers at the end of the day will have a higher income."
